Traditional political advertising has been done using traditional media, such as print advertising, TV, and radio. With competition for donor resources and limited funds, there remains a need for cost effective advertising techniques. Importantly, campaigns for candidates or other political causes need to use ads in a cost effective manner to have an impact at the polls.
Currently, media consumption is transitioning from conventional communication means—such as broadcast television and radio, print media, and postal mail—to electronic media distributed, for example, over the Internet and via electronic mail (i.e., email). However, advertising spending continues to focus heavily on traditional communications means. Web-based and electronic communications are becoming the industry standard for personal and business use. Increasingly, news, advertisements, business communications, personal communications, and other information (collectively hereinafter also referred to as “media consumption”) are being created, stored, and transmitted electronically via computing networks, such as the Internet. A computing network, as used herein, refers to a collection of desktop computers, laptop computers, mobile phones, handheld or mobile computing devices (collectively “personal computing device” or “computing device”) interconnected by communication channels that facilitate communications among users and allows users to share resources. At work, employees access such networks, along with their associated corporate computing resources from their local computing device, on a daily basis in order to perform their jobs. Away from work, people similarly access such networks and resources, typically through home, mobile, or remote connections. Numerous types of electronic and network connections and communication channels are ubiquitous in the industry and well known to one familiar with this technology and industry. For example: wired and wireless connections, a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a virtual private network (VPN), high speed connections of various types, intranets, extranets, the Internet, and the like.
Online advertising often prices ads on a per impression basis, where an impression is a single instance of displaying an ad to an individual. Paying for an impression to an individual that is not registered to vote, unlikely to vote, or has likely already made up her mind on the issue, may be a wasted impression that costs the campaign precious capital. Furthermore, the ability to serve up individual impressions on a screen to a specific individual presents a unique opportunity and challenge not addressed in traditional media campaigns. As such, there remains a need to create strategies and technologies that deliver individual advertising experiences to voters to support political campaigns.